Speaker perspective and reference in young children

Abstract

When speakers choose a word, they choose the perspective from which they wish to present an entity or an event. In the present study we tested the hypothesis that young children accept multiple perspectives from an early age. That is, they know that two terms can refer to the same entity, as shown by their comprehension and production of multiple terms for the same referent. A total of 36 children aged 2;2 to 4;8 answered questions about pictures that required shifts in level (e.g., from cat to animal or the reverse) or domain (e.g., from dog to sailor or the reverse). Even the youngest two-year-olds managed both tasks: they understood multiple terms for the same referents and also produced second terms for referents that had already been labelled. These data support a many-perspectives view of lexical acquisition over a single-perspective view.